Perspective is what makes the difference.

Maybe that’s a good metaphor for how I could feel about life’s unfolding dramas. Depending upon how I perceive events I can either freeze in the cold and wet of my life’s most recent storm of problems, or I can step back into the eye of the storm, dry and protected, where trust lives. Trust can change how I perceive the storms that swirl through my life.

If I know, not just believe, but know, deep in my heart, that “everything is always working out for me,” as Abraham-Hicks says, it changes everything. Whatever is occurring in my life is not happening to me, but is happening for me.

And trust goes even deeper. Trust is knowing that Spirit has my back. Trust is owning that whatever is happening in my life, guidance and support are there for the asking. When I trust, Spirit holds a strong roof over my head and warms me with the fires of love. I am held within the arms of angels, as I stand protected in the eye of the hurricane.

What this means is that we don’t have to be blown around by the storms in our lives.

Unfortunately fear often sucks us into the drama with a tornado of emotion. Fear tells us we have to fix the problem, or make it go away somehow. Fear causes us to struggle against it and be so fully focused upon the problem that we inadvertently keep creating more of it.

It might look like this. You’re having a lousy day at work. You started out that morning tired, having slept poorly. Your emotional weather forecast - grey skies with a chance of drizzle. Now, you’re feeling insecure and you’re doubting the decisions you’re making at work. Emotional rain is drizzling down your neck, cold and wet. Your co-workers are enjoying themselves, laughing and chatting, and you’re feeling left out. The cold, drizzle becomes a constant rain of negativity on your unprotected head. You’re feeling too tired and grumpy to make the effort to join in with your co-workers, and you tell yourself there’s too much work to do anyway. The rain becomes a downpour. Almost without your volition your mind is increasingly filled with negative thoughts, about what you are doing, about what others are doing. Finally, like a cartoon character with her own personal thunderstorm pouring and crashing about her head, you leave work for the day. You get into the car and your stomach is in a knot. Your mind is looping over and over the day and what you and everybody else did wrong. Your perfect storm has descended.

But what if you didn’t have to go there?

What if you could be more of an observer of what is happening, like a weather-watcher of your own life? What if you knew you were safe and protected within the arms of Spirit? Could you experience a grey and drizzly emotional day from a protected space inside rather than standing out in the wet and cold? What would that look like?

It might look like this. You start out the morning tired, having slept poorly. As you get out of bed, your emotional weather forecast is grey skies with a chance of drizzle.  Making yourself a warming cup of tea, you ask Spirit for a little extra support and energy today.

At work, feelings of insecurity well up, you don’t know why. So you ask your Higher Self, “I wonder what’s going on?”* You return your attention to work and let go of worrying about those ‘not good enough’ feelings, mentally turning them over to your Higher Self. With your attention focused on work, an image memory seeps into your awareness of yourself as a young child believing she wasn’t good enough. You respond to the image by imagining your adult self holding your inner child, loving her, with the angel of your Higher Self standing behind you enfolding you both in her wings. In a few moments, everyone feels better. 😊

Later in the day, your co-workers are enjoying themselves, laughing and chatting. You’re working nearby. You feel a cold drizzle of negativity seep into your mind, as you feel left out of their community. Again, you stop and ask, “I wonder what’s going on?”* In doing so, you step out of the rain and back into the warmth of Spirit’s protection. Giving it over to Spirit, you return to your job and once again remember yourself as a young child. This time she’s feeling abandoned and alone. You visualize yourself holding her lovingly and telling her you will always take care of her. Again, you see both of you enfolded within the wings of your Higher Self. You feel comforted, loved, and able to refocus upon the work you were doing, grateful for the support from Spirit.

The end of the day arrives and you’re tired, but you feel balanced and calm. You’re glad to be going home to a warm dinner and look forward to a relaxing evening. You offer a prayer of gratitude for the support and guidance received as you turn your car and your thoughts toward home.

I'd rather have a day like that. Wouldn't you?

I'll admit that was me in those examples. Though I didn't get to the guidance part until I finally remembered to ask. And really, it was just a little storm in the overall scheme of things given all that is going on in the world. Still, the metaphor holds true. The more that we can let go of the struggle, step into the role of observer, and back into the arms of Spirit by asking for support and guidance, the more gracefully we can weather all the storms. Support from Spirit can be the roof over our heads and the fire that warms us. It can be our safe place from which to observe the storms swirling around without getting caught up in the drama. Who knows, with practice we might even come to enjoy the stormy days as well as the sunny!

* This wording is a specific technique for accessing guidance from your Higher Self taught by Maureen J. St. Germain in her wonderful book, Waking Up in 5D: A Practical Guide to Mulitdimensional Transformation.  ​

A good friend of mine, with whom I’ve shared much of my spiritual journey over these last many years, often greets life lessons from Spirit with a grimace, a laugh and the words, “It’s just another f*#?! growth opportunity!” It always makes me chuckle and nod my head in sympathetic agreement.
 
Life lessons are a constant because Spirit is the constant in our lives.
 
It is a constant, which paradoxically is everchanging. Perhaps that is the essence of the quote from Heraclitus, “The only constant in life is change.” Usually that quote is referred to as meaning that life is full of change so don’t get too attached to the way things are. Get with the program and be willing to allow things to change. And that is one way to deal with the inevitable change that happens.
 
Or, we could look at change as the movement of Spirit in our lives.
 
Mother Nature gives us all sorts of metaphors for this, flowing water that is never still, the constantly moving wind, one season shifting into the next. The energy of life, ever in motion, never still.
 
Change is growth, evolving, transforming, becoming, discovering itself. To stay the same is to stagnate, to die. Yet, even in death there is transformation, dissolution and change into something other than what was.
 
Change is Spirit moving in our lives, consistently offering us the opportunity to grow. Spirit offers us change in several ways.
 
Change can come from the outside. It can look like a new love relationship, a new job, a difficult relationship pushing you to make a change. It can look like a flooded basement. It can even look like a world-wide pandemic. ☹
 
Change can also come from the inside, which looks a little different. Change from the inside is more about feelings. Maybe you feel the urge to try something new. Maybe you feel a sense of excitement about a new project, or a different aspect of a project you are already working on. Maybe you feel increasingly uncomfortable about a situation you are in. You feel the need to make a change. Maybe a new idea comes to mind and sticks with you until you do something about it. This is Spirit communicating the need for change, growth and evolving. 
 
Often, we’ll receive the impetus for change on the inside first.
 
If we don’t act on that prompting, the need for change will come at us from the outside. We do tend to get comfortable in our ruts and Spirit will need to push us from several directions at once.
 
Recently, I’ve been getting the push for change from Spirit. And when I say Spirit, I mean from Spirit through my Higher Self. So, my Higher Self has been pushing for a change in my blog writing, and my website. I’ve been feeling increasingly uncomfortable and resistant to continuing the current format. I’ve been feeling a strong impetus to simplify it all. 
 
Paradoxically, I’ve been resisting that push to change. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?  Wrong, at least in this case.
 
Our Higher Selves know better than we do where the path of growth is, and even if it feels scary to us to venture out of our comfort envelopes, it is venturing that we must go.
 
I woke this morning to Peter’s urgent voice saying, “Holly! We have a major leak in the bathroom. It’s all over the floor and the basement is flooded. The floor and ceiling will have to be replaced.”
 
I was curled on my side, cozy in my blankets. My bed was warm, soft and so comfortable.  I was sorely tempted to just go back to sleep. I didn’t want to deal with floods at 6 AM. What a wonderful metaphor for that cozy comfort zone that lulls us back to sleep instead of waking up to the changes we need to make in our lives.
 
So, this is how Spirit is moving in my life this morning. The change is coming at me from the outside.  This tells me there is something I need to wake up to on the inside. There’s probably a leak somewhere in my energetic plumbing that’s flooding my foundations.
 
Peter called the plumber right away this morning and the plumber is downstairs now, fixing the faulty seal on the toilet that created the flood in our basement. Now all I need is a spiritual plumber that I can call to fix the faulty seal creating the leak in my energetic system!
 
​Spirit is offering me the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and grow. The life lessons just keep on coming. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
 
After all, who doesn’t want another f*#?! growth opportunity?